Six New Things – Week of July 22, 2024

July is a whirlwind: it’s Disability Pride Month; it’s a do-everything-outside month; it’s almost get ready for back-to-school month; and this week/year it’s a hurricane-in-the-socio-political pool month. It’s enough to send heads spinning – so it’s good it’s also a rest-and-renew month.

ONE

Beaming Books’, Disability Pride Month list, features two new offerings perfect for a new school year, too. Reading the ‘inclusive’ and ‘aspirational’, We Are a Class, aloud, ‘responsively, collectively, or as spoken-word performance’ turns it into ‘a pledge, a commitment, a promise among the members of a …class’. The book is accompanied by a downloadable Classroom Pledge Poster and/or a color-me version.

Kids challenged by a group coloring project due to perfectionism, may appreciate Poppy’s Perfect Crayons, which ‘offers a colorful story about how much fun ‘imperfect’ things can be’.

Find more Disability Pride and Back-to-School reads in our lib guides.

TWO

Back-to-School means Back-to-Church-Programs!

As you contemplate Sunday school and confirmation curricula, Youth Ministries and Adult Bible study, The Ministry Lab is here to connect you to resources for all ages. Let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll find inspiring, transformational solutions.

For example, The Peace Table Storybook Bible comes highly recommended and is now accompanied by The Peace Table Activity Booklet, a Bible Reference Poster Pack, and/or Prayer and Peace Poster Pack – making Sunday school plans a breeze.

Find more inspiration in our Bible with Children lib guide.

THREE

If Back-to-School days are followed closely by Stewardship Drive days, check out Church Anew’s Stewardship in a Box Volume 2: The Impossible Promise of Enough, a ‘choose your own adventure’ resource that will help – in ways that fit each context best – from the beginning to the end of a stewardship campaign.

Find additional resources in our Stewardship lib guide.

FOUR

Stewardship campaigns are a great time to consider consumption and our relationship with Earth’s resources. This Sweet Earth: Walking with Our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse (Broadleaf) encourages deepening our relationship ‘with this sweet earth in all its beauty, wonder, and wisdom’ as we walk alongside our children. These relationships are essential to the choice, ‘to shift our lives away from death-dealing profit systems toward life-giving, generous systems’.

Our Nature Time Great Idea encourages getting outside for all sorts of reasons and includes Path to Peace with Creation: ‘Follow the Peace Path’ Cards (MennoMedia) with its 52 ideas for Bible-based, outdoors, family-faith-at-home activities.

FIVE

Get inspired for specific climate care steps individuals and congregations can take through Talking Climate Change with Katharine Hayhoe [author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World (Simon & Schuster)] – the blog features Good News: global innovative climate solutions; Not-So-Good-News: the latest info on climate change; and an Inspiration of the Month: current efforts and ideas for engaging climate change. Each post emphasizes the need to be in conversation with others and offers tips and topics to get conversations started.

Whether talk is about climate change or differently-abled persons, stewardship or politics, every topic seems divisive and challenging these days.

The Ministry Lab is excited about our five-part video series, Graceful Conversations: Building Arcs across Divided Perspectives. This free series should be available in mid-August and will be free for member congregations. It is being produced in collaboration with Tammy Walhof, director of Lutheran Advocacy – Minnesota, with gratitude to Edina Community Lutheran Church for feedback and encouragement.

SIX

If the summer rollercoaster has left your head in the clouds and your tail in a spin, Starlight & Stone: A Mindfulness Colouring Book Inspired by Iona (Wild Goose) may be just the thing to settle heart, mind, and soul.

Or, perhaps Soulfull: A Weekly Devotional to Nourish the Mind, Body, and Spirit (Penguin Random House), with its ‘spiritual reflections, recipes, activities, and prayers that come together as an encyclopedia of hope and spiritual direction’ is more your speed.

Find more for whole-self care in our Contemplative Arts lib guide.